My Old Blog

The Wayback Machine is an archive of the Internet started in 1996. Everyone knows you can search for anything on the Internet, but we often think that if you “take down” that website or remove that offensive post that it disappears….not so. If it is caught by the Wayback Machine you can reread it forever, long after you realize you were just an ill-informed ignorant jerk.

Here is the archive of my website. Of course, all the content is still on this site since I have already archived my old posts here, but it is interesting nonetheless. I know everyone realizes how quickly the Internet moves, but as a reminder take a look at the orginial Hotmail page or the Netscape Home Page. They look silly.

Also, I read three really interesting articles on happiness, one of my favorite subjects. The first one is about the hedonic set point and our potential ability to reset it. It mentions a few topics that I think about alot: that people are not necessarily hardwired to be happy, that self-hypnotism/auto-suggestion can alter our hedonic set point, and that cognitive dissonance is a way of life for many people. (FYI: The hedonic set point is a person’s baseline level of happiness.)

The second is about people’s tendency to revert back to their hedonic set point regardless of extreme positive or negative events, the importance of social networks to happiness, how increasing GDP isn’t increasing our levels of satisfaction, and how people living in the slums of Calcutta are happier than their counterparts in the US who are not starving and diseased.

The third is a brief interview with a Christian researcher coming out in favor of gay marriage because he says marriages makes people happier and more well adjusted, regardless of sexual orientation. Here is an excerpt:

Science & Spirit: In your studies of happiness, have you found any groups of people who are happier than average?

David Myers: Happiness is about equally available to people of any age, gender, or race. Income increases beyond what

I wrote a post one time about a simple living organization that tries to scale back their lifestyles to something more manageable and…well…simple. I scoffed a bit, and now that I think about it….I’ve done exactly that, on accident.

I rent. I have no upkeep, no maintenance, no utilities to pay. I never cut the grass. The bushes do not need trimming and the gutters never clog.

I have clothes from high school. They don’t fit so well anymore….but I am still wearing them….except the underwear. I try to switch that out every once in a while just for the sake of it.

I have a 20 year old car that is paid for. I don’t maintain it really. I just patch it up enough to keep it getting me back and forth to work. People make fun of it, but I don’t really care.

I eat out every meal, so I don’t have to go to the grocery store. No food to spoil….less trash to take out. I never run out of milk or cereal. I don’t snack in between meals. I never wash the dishes.

I live 10 minutes from work. I send my work clothes to the cleaner to get ironed. All my bills are scheduled to pay automatically online each month.

Today I got the windshield wipers changed on my car and swept the room. That’s the most domestic frou frou I’ve done in a while.

People that are in “management” work longer hours, have more responsibility, and more stress. They also report greater satisfaction with their jobs and lives. I always sort of wondered about that. If they work longer and have more stress then why are they happier with it?

Well, my theory, which is largely backed up by research although I’ve never seen a study specifically on this, is that people enjoy responsibility….despite what they sometimes say. Nietzsche called it the Will to Power, and I don’t mean to be Machiavellian at all (nor did Nietzsche I think), but people enjoy positions where they are able make decisions….where they are able to make a difference…where they matter. It isn’t necessarily negative.

So I wonder would I be happier with my life if I had more stress and responsibility? I’m not sure. I guess the stress and responsibility would have to be in service of something that “made a difference”.

Hmm…I am adamant about learning the tendencies of “most” people since the world is full of them, but I am always careful not to throw myself into that group. The simple life sounds so nice.

I’ve put myself on a pseudo-diet, which means I am restricting my eating to sensible portions instead of outright gluttony. Some days I am mostly vegetarian and I am trying to stay away from sugars and breads. I can say, like all other diet changes I’ve tried in the past, that it is ineffectual so far. We’ll see. I don’t want to poo poo it yet….although I suppose 99% of diets fail anyway. I wouldn’t say I am fat; I’m just heavier than ever.

I’ve played tennis 4 days in a row. I’ve come to that age where I have to play for fun because I’m not sure I’ll ever be any good anymore. It’s still better than sitting in front of this computer I suppose. My butt hurts.

I told one of my managers at work (the one in charge of my career) that I have trouble concentrating because I am only mildly interested in what I do, and that I was “pursuing other alternatives” (when I can get motivated to do so). She was very encouraging, but unable to help me. I can’t complain too much. I still like what I do more than most people I’d bet, and it is always a great comfort to be able to walk away at any moment and tell them to EMA if the fancy strikes.

I ran across a great paper by the Boston Federal Reserve on changes in leisure time over the past five decades. Work/Life balance is surely one of my favorite topics, and this research focuses partly on a distinction that I think I fail to give enough thought to: that all non-work time is not created equal.

When I contend that we are working more than ever, that might be true, but if we are working correspondingly less outside our jobs (spending less time in cleaning, house maintenance, cooking, whatever)……then perhaps total work is not going up. The paper deals with quantities of time (which are easier to measure), not quality of time, and is based on a few questionable assumptions….but the research is interesting nonetheless.

I really like Propel Fitness Water. I laughed at the concept, since it is called a “water beverage” on the label. Isn’t water good for fitness anyway? Isn’t water already a beverage? I am pushing this stuff hard though. It tastes similar to but better than Kool-Aid, has lots of vitamins and is only like 10 calories. It tastes good, and comes in a cool plastic squirt bottle.

That’s about it. I’m off to bed. I need to go on vacation this year somewhere. Any suggestions?

The “Budweiser – True” ad campaign is one of the all time greats…up there with “Where’s the Beef?”, “Tastes Great/Less Filling”, and my personal favorite “Only you can prevent forest fires”.

It depicts young, skinny, good looking men and women of all races enjoying Budweiser, becoming best friends, preparing to fornicate with each other, laughing, winning, and drinking in moderation.

But we all know that drinking isn’t like that. Budweiser’s core audience is a trailer park, gunrack-in-the-pickup redneck (no offense to the rednecks….Budweiser is a decent beer). Yet there are no commercials like that.

One step further and we know that drinking will not make you clever, or liked…..and it may allow you fornicate (provided you don’t drink too much), but you probably won’t like the partner you end up with. You will not remain young and skinny for long as a loyal, frequent Bud customer.

You will have terrible hangovers, forget where you left your credit card, where you parked your car….you will blackout for long periods and only assume assume you had a good time when really you made a complete ass of yourself….you will have extraordinary bar tabs from buying 10 dollar shots for people you’ll never see again….you will wake up in strange places with ugly people, nauseous with a blinding headache….maybe even in an ditch or gutter.

Wassup!!!!

Make this commercial bitches. True.

Several people have commented on my comment that one day I may stop posting on the website. They’ve also commented about the girlfriend thing, and how negative/apathetic I’ve been in general.

That’s not like me at all. I just need to pick better times to write….things have actually been pretty good lately, and getting better I think.

I think the website will be around for a long time to come. Everything waxes and wanes. Habits, people, work, etc do take up time though. Its always fucking time. Why can’t we ever seem to get a handle on it?

I went to Chicago last week to get certified to teach a class on India, how their world view differs from ours, and how that can affect the workplace. I mention it because one of the points is that Amercans have a very linear view of time, Indians have a more circular view.

We speak about time as if it were a quantity, to be hoarded, spent wisely, parselled, and optimized. What we do now is dictated by what we were able to get done yesterday and will have a profound affect on where we end up tomorrow.

For Indians time is the liquid through which their lives move. It is amorphous and situational….it is not counted, but experienced. The past is important, but the present is forever recurring, and does not bear on the future like for us. Cause and effect can become decoupled in India….what you do today having little effect on where you might be in a few years. It is all determined by situation and relationships outside of your control.

We consider Indians horrible at time management when the fact is that WE are the ones always complaining about time. You’ll never hear an Indian say they are rushed, they don’t need to check their schedule (because they don’t have one), and they are never too busy to stop for a second and smell the roses (or the sewage in the streets, as the case may be). So I guess they seem to manage time pretty well….we are the ones obsessed, but never able to get a handle on it.

And then there is work…I got promoted, but didn’t really care. I got a decent raise, but it only served to offset the benefits they took away from me last year. I’ve actually wandered a good bit about work lately…read some bits of books about some of my favorite subjects (human motivations, incentives, and organizational values), thought laterally while stuck in traffic, researched how much it would take for me to retire today….dreamed up some weird scenarios to get that done, looked into some franchises so I could own my own business and get out from under the finger of the Man, researched some schools to go back to……applied for some jobs, but I will still get nowhere on that because I have “no relevant experience”. Screw those bastards. They are wrong and I am right….they just don’t know it yet.

I am still supposed to “make work better”. That is what all the things I’m good at tell me I should be doing. It is a powerful and scary idea to know what you are supposed to be doing with your life.

I think everyone should, at some time…hopefully soon, be forced to write down in a paragraph or less what they believe in and what they want…short and sweet. The shorter the better, so you can repeat it to yourself….like self-hypnotism. At first it might be long, but keep re-writing it until it makes perfect and obvious sense to you. You don’t even have to do anything with it…..the simple act of writing it will make it come true eventually. I would say it is the one of the single most important things I have ever done.

So I might go back to school too….not because I think I need it, or even to get a job (although I would certainly use it for that), but because I want to think about organizational (company, church, govt, NGO, etc) development and how organizational values and structure force people to behave in certain ways….how we are reaping what we’ve sewn…..how people are neither better nor worse than they have ever been. The situation changes and people do what they must to get by. Change the rules of the game and people will play it differently. And I really believe I would enjoy thinking about that for a year or two….to really start to get my thoughts together.

If anyone is interested in any of the things I mentioned above….get in touch with me.

I forgot how tired I get when I have alot to do at work. I’ve slept some odd hours lately, from as little as 5 hours to as much as 10 or 11. I don’t feel a ton different either way. But when I run around all day at work….at 6 or 7 when I am finished I feel like I’ve been beaten with a blunt object. My eyes get so heavy.

Anywho…..it has come to my attention lately that one day I may not have a website anymore….or at least won’t keep it. I used to think that one day I might “get important” or someone from work would read it or something and that I would incriminate myself and have to take the shit down.

I don’t think that anymore. I have learned that people don’t really care what I think, at least in a way that incriminates me. I can say pretty much whatever I want. Only a very few people have ever grilled me about what I post, even the things where I don’t really mean it and say stuff inflammatory but amusing just because I think it fits the moment. People read my posts and comment to me about the funny stuff or some interesting factoid I put on here…..no one really ever says, “you’re a depressive, opinionated, self-absorbed bastard”….although I suppose a few people have said that.

So what I think is that one day I will just cease to have anything to say….and perhaps that won’t be such a bad day when/if it comes. Many things I do, or am able to do, are a product of the fact that I am without significant responsibility and have money (not because I make alot, but because I spend little). I CAN pick up and go to India (which I wrote about)…..because I don’t have a family to take care of and/or a house to look after.

I write posts about random facts, my extra-curricular activities, drinking, travel, economics, etc. They are all things that require time and a wandering mind. I complain about lack of time now, but the fact is that I should have more than just about anyone……after all, what do I really HAVE to do (other than go to work)?

So all the factors of my life that lead to this website could easily disappear if I had more responsibility. I guess responsibility isn’t always a bad thing. Maybe I would find something else to write about??? Although if I can barely find time now, and need extra wandering ideas to think of what to write…..then maybe not.

I wrote most when I was unemployed (living at home) and when I first moved to Atlanta (when I knew absolutely no one and lived alone drinking Sam Adams by myself in that little apartment in Post). I also write alot when I travel….again all instances where I have lots and lots of time.

Not that writing takes up a TON of time. But it does often require a rested, creative mind and the mood….and the mood disappears if you’re doing other stuff.

Strange to think about…..I always thought I wrote because I liked it. I do, but I think I might allow it to get crowded out if I had other stuff.

Who knows? I’m rambling. I need to sleep. My eyes are burning.

I know I haven’t made any posts in a really long time. I have been busy with my girlfriend. I know it is obvious and all normal people realize how much time a girlfriend requires…..however, I never realized it. I am happy to spend the time, but now I see how easy it is to neglect other things in your life for a significant other. There are still only 24 hours in a day….

Here is an interesting article by McKinsey on what percentage of jobs, especially in the service sector, could potentially be offshored, and what effect that would have on wages in the US (and in the foreign country).

It also talks about a fact that I saw first hand: Only a very small percentage of foreign workers with the correct university degree for a given field are actually “employable” by multinational companies. 13% was the number they came up with. Interesting…even if there is no way to verify it.

I don’t even think I need to add any clever comments to this one…..it stands on its own.

Raju Raghuvanshi was greeted with cries of “ghost” and neighbours locking doors when he returned from a short spell in jail to his village in Madhya Pradesh.

He had fallen ill in prison and was taken to hospital. Relatives heard he had died and performed his last rites.

“I have now to prove that I am alive,” he said. “But I will have them punished.”

A split opinion about one of my favorite topics.

This topic is very dear to my heart as I understand well that a rising tide does not lift all boats (as the saying goes)…..a rising tide sinks those without the money to buy a boat.

Also, people deal poorly with inequality psychologically. They are not swayed by absolute wealth past persistence needs, but prefer to be better off than their neighbors rather they have everyone have a little more. That’s great for those with more, but as more and more goes to less and less, it creates more and more resentment, stress, and unhappiness for those left over (which is just about everyone).

There is a sin tax on beer and wine and such….I think it is reasonable to have an “unhappiness tax” acknowledging that earning grossly more than everyone else creates anxiety for society at large. While I’m on the topic of preventative taxes, I also think SUVs whose hood comes up to the windshield of normal sized cars should be taxed extra for making the roads more dangerous for the rest of us.

Working in India put a different spin on wages for me as I watched people do the same highly skilled job as me for 6 times less salary. The argument for why those in the bottom twenty percentile of earnings in the US have made negative real wage gains over the past twenty five years is immigration. Immigrants start at the bottom of our wage food chain and since immigration has accounted for almost all US population growth in recent years…..the argument is that there is an ample pool of cheap labor even though there seems like there shouldn’t be.

The lesson is that the supply of labor in a particular labor market greatly affects wages…regardless of the skill level needed to perform the job. So take a skilled job like computer programmer that is fairly well paid. It is paid so largely because there is a limited pool of labor that knows how to do it….not necessarily because the job is more productive than lower skill level jobs.

All things being equal (which I realize they never are), when supply of labor jumps the wages of the labor decreases. What this has to do with India and wage inequality is that outsourcing does cause us to lose jobs in certain cases (although in certain cases it just looks like that is what it is doing), but it also causes the average wage for that job here in the US to decrease. If an Indian computer programmer makes 10 chits an hour and a US computer programmer makes 100 chits an hour….and they are both suddenly thrown into a common labor pool (which technology has made possible), then eventually all programmers will make 55 chits an hour in my oversimplified model.

So we see the wages of the middle class, in skilled productive jobs, squeezed because the size of their labor pool has jumped…even if some of the pool is living on the other side of the planet. If you sit in front of a computer all day in your job, I wouldn’t expect your job to be around in 10 years (or sooner). If it is around, be certain that you won’t be making as much doing it.

There is always a fight between Labor and Capital for profits of work. The winner in all this is Capital….those who earn money through dividends, interest, and capital gains. They skim (not implying illegally) money from the difference between the old wages and the new. Business gets richer, the wage earner in the US gets squeezed, and on a side note for everyone who has a soft spot for third world or developing countries…the US essentially pays to develop the third world through increased profits stemming from decreased wages. Remember wages (in the US) are the single largest expense for most employers (greater than half of revenue goes to labor cost usually).

That is making no judgment about what development can destroy culturally or environmentally, but, as demand to immigrate to the US shows, most people would love a shot at our lifestyle. Forget the IMF, World Bank, UN, and all the other INGOs trying to end poverty….teach the third world to speak English, build them a communications infrastructure (which can be done wirelessly fairly cheaply), and show them how to use a computer……and US business will do the rest.

Actually, that doesn’t sound so easy. Perhaps better to bet on discovering oil and let corrupt politicians hoard and waste the money….hmm….that doesn’t work either.

Ok, obviously it is hard to end poverty and develop the third world, but a good start would be to let the US find ways to outsource more jobs. Then maybe we could become a third world country too and someone will be kind enough to outsource their jobs to back to us.

If there is a lesson here, which there doesn’t seem to be, it is to move from the Wages camp to the Capital camp. Wage earners seem to be screwed. Open a business and then YOU can exploit the advantages capital enjoys these days.